HIGHLIGHTS: Attack Comes Hours After Arafat's Call for Stopping Attacks on Israelis & Shortly After Israel Mobilization of Reserve Units to Reinforce Latest Incursions||PFLP Claims Responsibility for the Attack||Last May Same Settlement Was Attacked-Three Settlers and the Attacker Were Killed|| STORY: A Palestinian Resistance man burst into a house in an internationally illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Thursday, killing four settlers, hours after Yasser Arafat demanded an end to Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.

The raid and ensuing gun battle at Itamar settlement took place shortly after Israel's occupation army started mobilizing some reserve units to reinforce its latest incursions into Palestinian areas following two suicide bombings.

In the latest attack, Israeli occupation army sources said a Palestinian raided a house in the Itamar settlement, then holed up inside and fought a fierce gun battle with troops and settlers.

"There are four dead and four wounded," medic Hezi Tsuriel told Israel Radio. One medic at the scene said the shooting was so heavy that it was impossible to evacuate the wounded. Settlers said they were hiding in their homes.

Resistance men from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

An anonymous caller told Reuters that an armed offshoot of the PFLP, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, carried out the attack on Itamar, near the West Bank city of Nablus.

The attack was the second time militants had struck Itamar in the last month.

On May 29, a Palestinian Resistance man shot dead three settlers from a Jewish seminary before he was shot dead inside the settlement.

Arafat's call for his people to stop attacks on Israeli civilians made no mention of stopping attacks on settlers, whom most Palestinians view as part of an army usurping West Bank and Gaza Strip lands they want for a state.

Settlements have been frequent targets of Resistance attacks since the start of their uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000.

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Four settlers were killed and four others wounded in the attack on Itamar settlement. An eyewitness at the scene said the shooting was so heavy that it was impossible to evacuate the wounded. Settlers said they were hiding in their homes.